LENT 2024/1. FLAME

When a day ends in relative calm and I am able to amble to bed peacefully, there's a little ritual I follow. Part of that bedtime ritual is to turn out the lights in our bathroom and strike a match. I do this as an homage to my mother, who was a fan of matches as room air fresheners, and also a lover of nature and a good campfire. The aesthetic of striking a wooden match and hearing the melodic punch of flame igniting, the visual burst from darkness to light, the flicker and dance of a moving light whose skirt floats around her in a spectrum of color… so much happens in an instant. I embark on an aromatic time travel that changes me into a child standing next to my mother. I remember watching her stare at the flame, her hand drifting back and forth moving it like a puppet, the flame trying to catch up with the pattern of her motion. Then, just before the fire reached her fingertips, having spent most of its fuel, she pursed her lips and the breath of her humanness blew out the flame. Each night I follow this remembered routine. I am transfixed very quickly and rather completely for a whole 10 seconds. After the flame is gone, I stir my hand with the blackened stick facing heavenward and watch the smoke rise and dissipate in a weightless vortex. There is a convergence of memory that includes years of campfire singing, the burning of the neighbor’s fields in autumn, the incinerator flaming with dried leaves in our back yard back in Pittsburgh, a beeswax candle at Christmas and paraffin melting onto every birthday cake. There is the reminiscent hint of my mother’s perfume mixed with bath soap accompanying the sulfur and carbon ignited in her small bathroom on East Bruceton Road. I feel her with me every night. It eases my soul.

Last night, knowing today began my Lenten journey of writing purposefully every day, I tried to capture the moment with my cell phone camera. 

Snapshot taken, routine completed, teeth brushed, prayers said, blankets pulled up over my shoulder, I laid on my side and reviewed the photo. What I intended to be a picture of a flame ended up capturing the image of the Washington DC temple behind the match, and with the light of the flame, a reflection of myself superimposed over the temple. 

Dave had given me that framed photo of the DC temple on our anniversary one year. We were married in that place four children and eleven grandchildren ago. “We should have a picture of our temple in our house,” he said. It’s not fine art, this photograph. It’s a typical realistic image without any “give” for interpretation. So I relegated it to our bathroom. Its viewed more often there anyway.

I don’t know if its my neurodivergent brain, or my off-kilter heart, or what… but I am not wholly at ease with all aspects of my religion, including temple worship and patterns. I wish this were not so, because it would be easier to live a life without serious questions. Nonetheless, I have them. To clarify, I don’t NOT believe. I honor my covenants. I am not one to throw the baby out with the bath water. I just don’t “get” what it all means, and the not getting it feels like it’s getting in the way of the faith part. I have to keep reminding myself that faith by nature is supposed to lay in a bed of ignorance, the same way one cannot have real courage if they don’t also have fear. 

I know love is the first and foremost. It is all encompassing. But something in me says there is more than just feeling and emitting love. If the feeling of love was all that is required would Jesus not have been able to die an old man surrounded by his loved ones? I need more information! It's gonna take some journeying to get it. Its gonna take some willingness to not understand everything but still trust it is well sourced.

This accidental photo spoke to me that while I may not have complete clarity about divinity, I still see myself reflected in divine images. And that flame, however short lived and small it may be, is enough light to keep me engaged and present. I might see the spent fuel of my faith swirling into darkness… but I can also continue to light matches. I put my feet in holy places. I whisper daily in the name of my Christ, willing to live with a measure of discomfort as I grow. I seek guidance from trusted sources and engage in my partnership with the Holy Ghost. Walking the walk of a believer calms my spirit. I repeat remembered testaments that brought me to being a believer in the first place. Most of all I fight to maintain my desire to believe. That desire burns within me, sometimes in maintenance mode, waiting until the fire is large and crackling hot and unquenchable. Trusting this, I keep striking little matches every day. Fire renewed, one small flame at a time. 

So, Mom, I will keep striking matches daily, to keep you with me, and to keep Him with me as well.

SALLY JO WINEBRENNER - A TRUE & FAITHFUL FRIEND

I paused at the window to peek out at the sweeping landscape and woody hillsides across the courtyard.

“Do these people really live here?” I thought to myself. 

The home reminded me of Dave’s grandparent’s 13 bedroom cottage on Mackinac Island MI. We had spent our honeymoon there, on the west bluff of the island just up from the historic Grand Hotel. It was a fairy-tale place for a honeymoon. Rather unreal. Now here I was in New York, feeling those familiar hints of overwhelming historic charm.

We had just recently moved to upstate New York, where my husband, fresh out of law school, would serve a year-long clerkship for the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Ellsworth Van Graafeiland had selected Dave as one of his clerks (the other clerk, incidentally, was Jay Powell, who is currently the Chair of the US Federal Reserve). While the Second Circuit Court heard cases in New York City, the Judge’s chambers were in Rochester. We were fortunate enough to rent a home in a quaint little Rochester suburb called Pittsford. I was twenty-one years old and pregnant with my second child. On this particular late summer evening the ladies’ organization in our church had an activity which included a tour of the home of Sally Jo Winebrenner. I knew no one there, quite literally, but mustered the courage to go in an effort to try to change that.

Sally Jo and Bob Winebrenner had opened the doors to their remarkable home with such grace and elan that even this newcomer girl bulging with baby felt like a well-seeded cherished old friend. The home was not only immaculate it dripped beauty and charm from every nook and crevice. That fateful day was life changing to me, not because of the place, though we are constantly changed by the beauty we encounter. I was unaware at the moment that the voice of Sally Jo Winebrenner would be an eternal source of comfort, guidance and confidence for me. It echoes in my head still and triggers my heart all these decades later.

 

I have since tried to evaluate why this particular woman was so pivotal in my life. We have remained friends since that one shared year in upstate New York. My current thinking is that I was new to adulthood and independence. Married young, and anxious to jump into motherhood before I had really grown into a functional adult (sorry kids), this journey to New York was an awakening. Dave was gone to Manhattan one week of each month when the judge heard cases. And during the three weeks he remained in Rochester the judge liked his clerks to be in the office until 7 pm, so my helpmeet was gone, with our only car, all day and into the late evening. I lived in an unfamiliar house in an unknown place with a baby and another on the way. My mom was in Pittsburgh and siblings all lived in other states. Looking back on it I feel a tender compassion for that girl who was me four decades ago.

Enter God, and his instrument, Sally Jo Winebrenner. Within a few weeks the bishop of our congregation called me to be a counselor in the church Young Women’s organization. Sally Jo was president. She has asked for me as a counselor. Don’t you think it rather risky to ask for a gal still wet behind the ears to teach and nurture girls who were just a handful of years younger than her? Sal was an adventurous gal. I should have known that by looking at the spaces she and Bobby took on as designers, renovators and decorators. Still, I suppose I had enough sense of self to accept the job and not wither under the emotional weight. Sally Jo never once indicated any worry about my abilities. She whispered confidence in everything we did, in everything she said. At least this is my memory of it. I was not her child, and she did not make me feel like a child. She had this magical way of making me feel like an equal. I have tried to emulate that in my own interactions with people younger and older than I am. I’ve since served as president of young and old women’s organizations in our church and how I serve in those capacities is based on how I observed her. 

Sally Jo and Bob in the era when we first met.

Bob and Sally Jo stretched their discipleship well beyond their church involvement. There is an indelible portrait in my personal history, stuck in my head and not in a photo album, that I am pretty certain will be played in that virtual life-film people talk about being shown to us when we die. It’s a warm spring evening and we are on the lawn at High Point, the same house where I first met Sally Jo. She and Bob have swung open the doors again. The Aherns, and others who shared the Winebrenners’ heart-space, are there. We sit out on the plush lawn, a refreshingly wet New York breeze flowing over my skin. Sally Jo walks out and places a guitar in my lap. “Sing for us” she says, as she scoots a lawn chair over close to me. This singular act represents who she is to me. She is the sort of soul who basks joyfully in the light of others, unaware that so often what she thinks is “their light” is mostly a reflection of her own. And her light, frankly, is a reflection of her God’s. She does love her God! 

In recent years Sally Jo has used the internet to offer bits of
hope, faith and encouragement on social media.

When we finished our stint in New York Bob and Sally Jo had another gathering at High Point and honored us with hand bound journals. Dick Ahern had wrapped them so beautifully we didn’t want to unwrap them. That journal is completely filled with life moments from the subsequent years. I look at its cover and feel that sort of melancholy happy/sad tugging at my heart, returning to the moment when it was fresh and new. And yet grateful for the experiences that have filled its pages. Sal and Bob always knew the perfect token of love to give someone.

The young Winebrenner family.

Winebrenner kids... lovely people, every one!

We moved back to Pittsburgh, and then to Utah. In those decades since we parted our paths have crossed intermittently; an afternoon tea at my mother’s place, a meeting for birthday lunch (our birthdays are in the same week of March). Sally Jo had me come to Pasadena CA to sing for her ladies group or her Relief Society, or maybe both, I don’t recall that detail, though I do recall the women and their marvelous dynamic. And I remember gathering red peppercorn twigs from her lawn. I put them in the garland coming down one of my staircases at Christmastime. I recall the lovely details of their various homes where we visited, in Pasadena, and on Mitchell Street in Pittsford, and then (lucky us) in Provo Utah when they finally bit the dust and left their beloved hometown of Pittsford just to be closer to their children and grands. Little cherished details like a fresh vase of peonies on the bedside table, down filled easy chairs and tiny silver frames on a lace tablecloth filed with cherished faces and places. I have a collection of very old finger sized sheep, Putz and carved and wooly… all different, gathered around a small manger at Christmastime. Sally Jo has a similar flock at her house at Christmastime, each lamb representing a member of her posterity. So much of Sally Jo is what I want to be part of Cori. Kindred hearts, I think. Like Dianna and Anne of Green Gables; bosom friends. 

Of course, there is so much that I have not acquired that I admire about her. I will never, with this neurodivergent mind of mine, have the gift of tidiness and completing tasks that she has. I dream of being as grounded and faithful as she. Everyone needs someone to look up to that doesn’t make you feel like its unattainable. Sally and I do share a romantic heart, and an unquenchable thirst for all things sentimental. That, and the fact that she has her Bob as I have my Dave. We do share the emotional safety of being loved and loving someone true and steady. We both acknowledge this as a rare gift.

Most people will say I should be writing in past tense about her, because this week our Sally Jo leapt into the arms of her Lord, and then immediately into the enfolding arms of her Bobby, somewhere in a Heaven-space. The only thing that softens the blow of the loss of her is picturing that reunion. I imagine the two of them setting to work beautifying Heaven. It was a double loss when Bob Winebrenner died a couple long years ago. Especially for his family. We who love him had our own personal grief for him being gone from sight, but we also had the vicarious sorrow at the separation of him and Sally Jo. We ached for her. She handled the separation with the same apparent grace she evidenced when I first met her at High Point. She certainly was grace personified! But I also know her heart, and imagine her pillow wet with quiet tears. We are just so delighted with our faith that the two of them are in each other’s arms once more.

Not knowing the effect of time or space that will be part of the next realm, I am only projecting my imagination on what she might be doing right now, but I do hope she will find my mom up there and give her a hug and share a bit of laughter. I have every confidence that there will come a time, in some other realm beyond our view, when Bob and Sally Jo Winebrenner will throw open some heavenly door and welcome us into a divine, radiant and holy space beautified by their presence. 

Please, God, make it so.

They make wherever they are feel like home.

Family.

Building faith, one generation at a time.

Turning work into play.

Home is wherever Grammie is.

https://www.bergmortuary.com/obituaries/Sally-Jo-Winebrenner/#!/TributeWall

"RELEASED" SOCIETY PRESIDENT

Over three and a half years ago, when our world screeched to a frantic stop with a worldwide pandemic, our friend Paul Dickamore called to ask if he could come visit. Visiting is in Paul’s nature normally, but these were not normal times. We welcomed him in, our faces covered with masks, and we sat with appropriate social distance. Thinking this was a friendly visit between a church leader (we was our Bishop) and his congregants, I was stopped short when he asked if I would be willing to accept what we know as a church “calling”, or divine assignment, to serve as the president of our church women’s organization known as Relief Society. I shook off the disbelief, though I could not for the life of me figure out why they would want such a flawed person filling that job, especially in such taxing times.

Years before, when another Bishop called me to be president of the Young Women’s organization, for our teenage girls, I immediately told him I had a problem with what was known at the time as the Personal Progress Program (I was not a fan of requiring girls to set goals on someone else’s goal list). That wise bishop responded with: “Can you love the girls?”

"Yes. Yes, that I can do." And I did.

So again, I answered yes. 

Looking back to that pandemic period, I suspect the Lord and his appointed leaders might have needed my bend to creativity. We had to figure out how to meet the needs of women on the varying spectrum of faith, who could not gather in person, many of whom were single or widowed, divided by social demographics on top of a pandemic. I spent that first year working through how to keep our spiritual and social ship afloat.  At the same time my husband, as Presiding Judge in the Second District of Utah Courts was trying to figure out how to keep the courts running virtually. I simmered soup and made bread, to take to sisters and families, in our kitchen while Dave held virtual court in his Judicial robes in the next room. What a strange and memorable (and frankly exhausting) time that was.

During my tenure as Relief Society President we handled twenty funerals, a few from Covid but mostly from the demons of cancer, falls, heart attacks and other typical doorways to death. I have sung at more funerals than I can count, and have served so many luncheons and dinners to grieving families that our normal bi-monthly Sunday family dinners for 25-30 people seem small.

Of course, none of this is done singly. That’s the most beautiful part. We work as a team, pulling each other up and over and through each joy and challenge set before us. I’ve had four incredible Counselors, at separate times, and a kind and capable Secretary. And Compassionate Service Leaders who are the hands of God in action. 

A few months after I began my service a young man from Houston came to live with us. Ariel has become like member of our family. Our grandkids call him Cunkle Ariel (Cousin-uncle). He lives with us still. He is not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was not familiar with out tenets. But he saw first-hand what was happening from the inside out. One day, standing at the kitchen island, we were talking politics and government.

“You know what America needs, to get this government in shape? They need a Relief Society President.”

We had a good laugh. 

He’s not too far off, though. We could use leaders who are conscious of the needs of the people. A system that weaves a thread between the broader leadership and the quietest citizen (Ministering). A process for uniting people in common causes (worship) and meaningful and purposeful work (service). These unifying activities create a byproduct of self-worth and willingness to be led by trustworthy leaders. We own our ability to sacrifice (the paying of tithes and offerings/ fasting / temple and missionary service) and acknowledge we are miraculously made larger when we purposefully make ourselves and our personal treasury smaller. 

Ariel may be right… America needs a Relief Society President.

During the holidays in December, our current Bishop called to visit. I knew it was coming. He was going to release me. And I was worried that it would devastate me. I knew it was past the typical time to let another fill that position. I absolutely love how our church has a lay ministry, and we all take turns filling jobs. I love how this requires us to be patient with and tolerant of each other. I love how it allows us to bend our pride and request guidance from the Lord and His angels. Stagnant water gets stale and full of slimy undrinkable guck. Living water, like the cold streams that flow down our mountains, is fresh and clear because it is moving and alive. I love that we are part of a living gospel, based on a few unchangeable truths, shifting over stones large and small in our journey back Home.

So a few weeks ago our Bishop stood at the pulpit and released me and my presidency, and immediately called four new and highly capable women to fill those spots.

Here’s the strange thing. I had thought I would be an emotional mess when I was released. I have loved with every ounce of me the women of our ward. I have shared their joys and wept with them in their sorrows. I have worried and prayed and struggled and rejoiced so much that I expected to fall apart when I was no longer needed. But I didn’t. 

I didn’t.

It's still puzzling to me that it is ok to no longer have this calling. I suppose it might be different if I were moving and lost touch with them. But frankly, I feel five years younger already! I have renewed enthusiasm for my writing and my music. I’m thrilled to define myself first as grandmother/mother/wife/sister/friend. I’m thinking of teaching guitar and ukulele again. I feel, ironically, kind of born again. Woot Woot!

I still love whom I loved, and can serve one on one those I feel personally beckoned to serve. 

My friend Lisa, the new RS Pres., told me that when they laid their hands on her head and set her apart, she imagined her shoulders growing wider as they spoke. I love that image. We don’t ask for the burdens to change, we just need our ability to carry them to increase.

I pray for Lisa. 

And I continue to pray for my Sisters in Christ. They may have changed my calling, but they did not take away my discipleship.

Not one week after my release I got another call from the Bishop’s Counselor.

“I know what you want, so just tell me one thing…” I said.

“Is this going to interfere with my anticipated January hibernation?”

“No, not at all! You’re going to love this new calling! It’s going to be easy!”

Then he called me to the Ward Activities Committee. He called Tasha, one of my counselors, to that committee as well. We went to church the next day and there was a big old poster on the wall of the lobby announcing the Ward Holiday Party on January 6^th. Tasha and I looked at each other and whispered… “So much for a January nap.”

Of course it was great preparing for, decorating for, cooking for, serving and cleaning up after the ward party. I’m serious, it was. But it wasn’t by any means a nap!

The last two days I have washed and folded 19 large tablecloths from that party. It takes drying them one at a time and folding them warm to keep them from wrinkling. As I handled each one of those large round tablecloths, I recalled the many funeral meals from which I carried those tablecloths home to launder. I recalled the various gatherings we were finally able to have, after the pandemic eased up and people hesitantly began to allow themselves to attend, followed by the laundering of those cloths. I recalled quarterly Ministering interviews coming around relentlessly, and laundering dishcloths and cleaning cloths from the homes of sisters we lost to death or struggle. There has been an awful lot of cleaning up to do. 

Today I met with Lisa for a few hours, trying to help her walk into this massive new responsibility. We have a unique ward, with responsibilities few other wards in our area would know about. A Relief Society president knows more than she wants to know, and far more than any single person except the Bishop and Elders Quorum President would know. It's a lot. And that doesn't include the grunt work that involves laundry. I handed off the freshly washed tablecloths, folded and stacked like reams of white paper. It felt like a symbolic exchange of a heavy handbook and set of scriptures from one RS president to another. They represent the word of the Lord in action.

I salute all who are serving, and who have served, and who will yet serve the women and families of our congregations. We are blessed by each other. I join all my sisters in the human race in recognizing that we are all givers and receivers. But I witness with my heart and hands that it is in the giving that we find our truest most lovable selves.

Onward, Christian soldiers!

My Counselors Tasha Evans and Cheryl Simmons
2021-2023

Counselors Amy Lopez in pink & Erin Ashby in stripes
2020-2021
Secretary Bonnie Smith in black
2020-2023

Welcoming the new RS Presidency at our
RS Christmas party Dec 2023

Late Pandemic gathering

The children's nativity we have done for 30 years became a drive-through event in 2020

Outdoor ward council during the pandemic
(Bishop Paul Dickamore and his counselors 
Scott Christensen and Steve Hone

Pandemic RS activity in my front yard.

Welcoming missionaries sent home during the pandemic

Required attire for all activities 2020-2022

An all too familiar scene in the last 3 years
20 funerals in our ward.

Figuring out the Ministering jigsaw.
My kitchen table was covered for two weeks with 150 names

I am grateful we get to touch once again!

 

DOUG ASAY - PRESENCE

Doug and Julie Asay

This past Spring, when our friend Kathy Oleson died unexpectedly, we gathered in celebration of her life. As a Relief Society we prepared and served a luncheon for her family and close friends after the funeral service. With a good crew of willing and capable people in the kitchen I went out to visit with some of the family while they were eating. My friends Doug and Julie Asay waved me over to their table. I sat and visited a few minutes, interfacing with Kathy’s kids and grandkids, as well as my old friends Doug and Julie. We were no longer in the same church congregation, so we had some catching up to do. While we visited, Kathy’s little grandkids got a little restless, understandably, following a viewing, service, and burial. Doug leaned over and reached into a bag at the side of his chair. Out came two red plastic Corvettes. The boys were soon entertaining themselves on the cultural hall floor.  

“Of course you just happened to have toy Vettes in your bag!” I laughed. 

“Yes, and we brought butterflies for the girls in case they aren't into cars.”

Doug was a giver of presents. First of all, he knew where to find the cool stuff… the stuff nobody else had. One day he showed up in our driveway with a pair of speakers for a sound system.

“Can you use these?” he asked, setting them in my garage. This was years ago. I still use them. 

Once he had a beautiful small acoustic bass that had been damaged.

“You want this?” 

“Sure!” (We are kindred spirits this way. If anyone needs anything… anything at all… one of us probably has it. And if we don’t have it, Doug knows where to get it.) We had it repaired and it now belongs to our composer grandson.

The problem for us now is that Doug took that storehouse of knowledge, good humor, secret haunts for special finds, and remarkable ability… he took all of that and skipped town this week. Left these earthly bonds. Found the perfect glassy reservoir of water and went waterskiing up to Heaven.

This was not too long ago.
 He could hardly walk, but by golly
 he was gonna get up on those skis!

A few weeks ago Doug and Julie came over to our house for a sweet afternoon of music and reminiscence. Dave and my sisters joined us. We laughed a lot and cried a bit. Doug was frail, and not long for this world. He sat in the recliner and talked the talk of a storyteller. Julie kept the stories straight as they veered off in Doug’s imagination. It touched me to see how she gracefully allowed him to be his own storyteller. She has surely been a blessing to him.

Snuggled down for an afternoon in our family room.

Doug’s been sick a long time, and he has outlived what most doctors told him would be his lifespan with the liver disease he was dealing with. He’s a tenacious fellow, determined and driven, and his resiliency has helped them hobble through some rough blows in their lives. Julie has been his steady, in every possible way. When they came she brought a gift of aromatic bath salts for each of us. I am reminded daily of our blessed time together.

Doug is not just a giver of presents. He is a giver of presence. 

Years ago, decades now, our family suffered a great unexpected loss. We had united in a vigil over our eighteen-year-old nephew, Clayton. He had experienced brain trauma in a motorcycle accident. We watched as his beautiful healthy skin healed, and his bruises dissipated. But his brain would not be able to heal from the swelling. We huddled in our grief and celebrated his life, slightly comforted by the lifesaving donation of most of his healthy young body to the transplant healing of other lives. Still, the grief was immense. The light from the doorway at the back of the chapel was blocked by a form just as the services began. There stood Doug, miles from his home, showing up. He knew my brother, Clayton’s dad, through business and had heard of his loss. So, he showed up. His presence still moves us to this day. Always will.

Doug would be the first to tell you of his flaws. And he would be the first to be the hands of Mercy in your own struggles. Libby and I both say if we had gone to the same high school we all would have been best buds. He’s that intriguing blend of faith and mischief. 

By the end the faith won. Even when he used his very last ounce of energy to spark a little mischief. It was love and trust that won in the end. Julie, with every ounce of her own energy and intelligence, let Doug be Doug right up to the moment he flew away. His daughter Melissa spent every morning helping him begin to navigate the day. He laughed till he had no more energy to laugh, sitting in our recliner that last afternoon, telling us about getting up before Melissa did one day and putting on her clothes instead of his own. It was a mistake of a brain being taxed, but he rode it for all it was worth. Doug, and his devoted family, had learned from life experience to roll with the punches and ride the wake of every splashy oversized cruiser that passed them by. No matter how often he ended up down in the water, he always got back up. This is the eternal legacy that ease and comfort will not create. And while what Doug wanted more than anything was to bestow presents on everyone he loved… and even those he may not have liked very much… what he gave, that is uniquely Doug, was his presence.

We could all take a lesson.

The Asay Clan

I have this image in my head of the pearly gates of heaven opening wide for a shiny rebuilt Corvette as it purrs on through. Doug throws his arm up and waves. And depending on where you stand, its either good-bye or hello. Either way, there’s gonna be some sort of memorable story to be told.

 

https://www.russonmortuary.com/obituaries/alan-asay

RICE PUDDING

If I find myself missing my mom, especially on a chilly autumn day when the windows get closed and the heater kicks on,

and the rice cooker has leftover rice from last night’s dinner,

and I happen to have fresh cream in the fridge (because it is the season for fresh peaches)..

Then all I have to do is whip up a batch of rice pudding,

nestle in an easy chair,

and conjure up the sound of her voice in the kitchen,

or on the phone,

or chatting with someone she loves…

Then I am home.

RICE PUDDING with COOKED RICE

1 1/2 c cooked white rice

1 c whole or 2% milk

1/4 t salt

1/2 c cream

1 egg, beaten

1/4 t cinnamon

a pinch of nutmeg

1/3 c sugar

1/3 c golden raisins (optional)

1/3 c raisins (optional)

1 t butter

1/2 t vanilla

Mix and set aside: beaten egg, cream, spices to be added later..

Put cooked rice. salt and milk in a pan and simmer about 10 minutes, stirring regularly, till it thickens.

Add sugar and stir.

Slowly stream-in egg and cream mix, stirring constantly till it's well combined. Stir till thick.

Stir in raisins, vanilla and butter.

Let cook at least 10 minutes.